Justice Kennedy Learns a New Word

Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy learned and used a new word during the Supreme Court’s oral argument about Marriage. He said, “The word that keeps coming back to me in this case is millennia.”

He wasn’t talking about the new voting bloc of young people called the millennials. He was referring to the thousands of years in which the public has honored marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

“And suddenly,” as Justice Stephen G. Breyer said, “you want nine people outside the ballot box” to change that by judicial fiat. That sounds like somebody is seeking government by judicial supremacists instead of by “We the people” (as our Constitution says).

–

The verdict of history that extends even farther back than the U.S. Constitution is why Kennedy said “the word that keeps coming back to (him) in this case is millennia.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. added, “Every definition that I looked up, prior to about a dozen years ago, defined marriage as unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife.”

It was not only the longevity of the husband-wife definition of marriage that troubled the Justices but also its universality. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. pointed out that, “Until the end of the 20th century, there never was a nation or a culture that recognized marriage between two people of the same sex.”

Alito noted that in ancient Greece, for example, only opposite-sex couples could be married even though same-sex relationships were openly tolerated. That proves the definition of marriage is not borne of prejudice or “animus” against homosexuals.

The same is true of the non-Western societies of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Incidentally, have you noticed that only Christian small business people have been harassed and sued for refusing to participate in same-sex marriages, even though our fast-growing immigrant populations of Muslims, Hindus and other faiths are also opposed to that concept?

The use of same-sex marriage to attack Christian businesses, but not businesses run by members of other religions, demonstrates what is really driving the demand for a new constitutional right to same-sex marriage. It is simply the latest attempt to destroy Christian institutions and discredit Christian beliefs.

The same-sex-marriage advocates like to say that as many as 37 states have already made same-sex marriage legal, and they use the argument of inevitability to pressure the rest of us to go along.

The truth is that only 11 of the 50 states authorized same-sex marriage by the legislative process, and only three of those were ratified by a vote of the people; the others were dictated by judges, who are now being asked to impose the same rule on the U.S. Territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.The best precedent for what the Supreme Court should do about gay marriage is the assisted suicide case of 1997 known as Washington v. Glucksberg. At a time when assisted suicide was illegal in every state, a lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to rule that suicide with a doctor’s assistance is a form of individual liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Although the Justices were as deeply divided on social issues then as they are today,the Court unanimously declined the invitation to create a new constitutional right. Then-Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in his majority opinion that judges should limit their rulings to “fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” — which assisted suicide, like same-sex marriage, clearly is not.

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court heard California’s Proposition 8 case, Justice Scalia famously asked gay marriage attorney Ted Olson, “When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868 when the 14th Amendment was adopted?” After much hemming and hawing, Olson finally admitted, “I can’t answer that question.”

Echoing the gay advocates, Obama’s Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the Supreme Court that “it is simply untenable … to wait until the majority decides that it is ready” for same-sex marriage. In other words, goodbye to government “of the people and by the people” and welcome to government by unelected judges.

Asking the Court to reject the will of the American people and impose a new rule that is not “objectively, deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” means, as Rehnquist warned in 1997, that our beloved Constitution would be “subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court.”

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of two new books published last year, “Who Killed the American Family” and the 50th anniversary edition of “A Choice Not An Echo.” She can be contacted by email at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

One response

I’d be shocked if the almighty “Supremes” do not legislate from the bench and illegally and unconstitutionally order all 50 states to legally legitimize the faux marriage union of the unnatural and immoral sexual relationship between two persons of the same sex.

Since when has upholding the crystal clear delineation and limits of government power spelled out in the U.S. Constitution ever been a priority of the U.S. Supreme Court?

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
– Sir John Dalberg-Acton

Save the illogical emotional arguments of homosexual marriage. I have an older brother who is “out of the closet” and openly living the homosexual lifestyle. Based on that sibling’s explanations and what I know of a nephew’s sexual orientation, I believe that many who live the homosexual lifestyle are born with that inclination. That is not to discount that there are those who choose this same-sex orientation for whatever personal reasons. It is still unnatural and immoral.

Even 10 years ago, this politically-correct conversation would never have made it into the mainstream conversations of our society as a serious legal possibility. 10 years…or less…from now, we will be way, way past this issue as gay marriage will have been legally legitimized and forced upon us all and the legal issues before our activist Supreme Court will be to legalize pedophilia, then on to those who prefer beastiality…children and animal rights be d*mned as long as the perverts get their unnatural sexual thrills.

The pedophilia rights people are already making limited headway to legally legitimize their sexual perversions.

“There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.”
– Niccolo Machiavelli